A New Chance at Life
by whatevergirl
Summary: Arnold Rimmer has got two hobbies: art, and hanging out in stasis booths. They give him a rather important opportunity he may have otherwise missed if he had not had both. Will be Lister/Rimmer
1. The End

_The idea came from reading the book Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers. It's really not necessary to read the book though._

_Later on, the series will become Lister/Rimmer, but we aren't there yet._

_I do apologise, but updates could be fairly slow; I have a busy life and I am also writing stories for Les Mis, Hawaii Five-0 and Brittas Empire_

_Red Dwarf does not belong to me and I make no money from this._

* * *

It had been one difference really, that sparked so many changes; one comment. If the comment had not been made, life for Arnold Rimmer would have been, in many ways, rather different. He still would have had ambitions to become an officer, he still would have tried desperately to study well, he still would have failed, he still would have joined the mining ship Red Dwarf and met his bunkmate first on Mimas (where he was posing as a taxi driver of a space hopper) and again later when the fellow joined the JMC to escape the moon.

There were numerous differences though. The first difference, and arguably the most important one, would be that Arnold Rimmer's life did not revolve around becoming an officer. That wasn't to say he had learnt how to interact with people; he still spent his spare time in stasis to avoid getting older when he wasn't doing anything and so had never developed that particular skill.

He had another focus; art.

It had been Howard who had made the comment. He was the closest to Arnold in age, just six years older, and although he never really liked the runt of his family, he didn't have a go at him unless someone else was around.

One afternoon, while Arnold had been home from boarding school for the summer holidays, Howard had come across him in the second floor library. The older boy had been searching for some more in depth journals from the test pilots of the Global Astronautical Society (the early version of the Space Corps), but he had come across his younger brother doing his history homework.

The fourteen year old boy had made a beautiful poster, carefully drawing a Roman soldier in the foreground with a drawing of the Colosseum in the background. He was currently adding neat little bullet points over the top of his background drawing about the strengths and weaknesses of the Roman Empire.

"Wow." Howard murmured as he peered over Arnold's shoulder to get a better look. "Why are you studying astronomy and stuff when you're so good at art?"

It was that comment that changed Arnold Rimmer's life; the idea that someone thought he was good at art. At the time, he had simply turned to scowl at his brother, not really believing any compliment the man would give him, but feeling a need to answer regardless.

"I'm just finishing my homework. I have to get back to looking at those books."

Those books, Howard mused, would likely be the law books his brother spent all his spare time scanning. Arnold wasn't book smart. Things didn't stick in the lad's head, but he had notebooks filled with the stuff he needed for this; Arnold wanted to divorce their parents.

Howard understood what he was trying to do, to take himself away from those high expectations. It wouldn't work in that respect; most of the time, Howard now lived on heavily cratered Callisto. His home was small there, but he had access to the subsurface ocean and the atmosphere was slowly being changed to incorporate more oxygen as they raised the surface temperature. In the next decade or so, he could go outside without a spacesuit on.

The only problem was, even living on a different moon; he still felt the pressures of his parents' expectations. He still looked at himself and wondered if he would ever be enough. He had, once or twice, considered inviting Arnold back to his home there when his school on Earth broke up for holidays, but he knew John and Frank would mock him for it. Besides, he planned to become a test pilot in the Space Corps, he had no problems with the exams, out of all his family he excelled the most in exams, but it was the interviews he struggled with.

They wanted their pilots to be good with people, all people of every type. He struggled with that. He wasn't a people person. John was the closest the brothers had to a people person, but he reserved his charms for certain people... much like their mother in that respect.

Arnold though, wasn't good with people, nor was he good with books, or exams. He was an honest young man, who hated lying and was, to be perfectly honest, terrible at it when he tried. The boy didn't like people touching him and he was very fond of routine.

If it wasn't for the fact that he could vaguely remember their mother being pregnant with him, and if he didn't have photos as evidence, he would have assumed Arnold was adopted. He was nothing like their mother who could easily hold onto several affairs and flirt with yet more men, she had a very carefree attitude to how she did things, so long as her sons were doing what she wanted them to.

"Arnold, you should take art next year."

Even if Arnold got divorced, their parents would still have to pay for his schooling. Howard wasn't sure where he would go in the holidays...

"You don't become an officer by taking art." Arnold replied, in a voice eerily like their father's. It must have been when Arnold had been asking about what subjects to take last year.

"Surely you can spare one subject in your GCSEs for something you like?"

"I've got another year till then." whispered Arnold. Howard frowned at the boy, wanting to say something comforting. He didn't know what to say; he'd never had such a long civil conversation with the child and as he readily acknowledged, he wasn't a good people person.

"Besides, can't you use art to become a morale officer?" he tried, hoping this was a helpful thing to say.

"It won't count for him though, will it?" Arnold went back to carefully writing out his notes onto the poster.

Howard stood and left, unknowing of how this conversation would change his little brother's future.

* * *

Arnold Judas Rimmer, first technician on the JMC ship Red Dwarf had two hobbies. The first, his oldest, was art. He made beautiful watercolour paintings and sold them; he didn't sell them for very much, because he really didn't believe he was very good at it. This was a shame, because his painting could actually go for a lot of money if he sold them somewhere other than on Red Dwarf.

But he didn't, so it would be pointless to think about it.

He saved the money he earned, planning to buy a house on Callisto. One of his brothers lived there, and since they had developed a life friendly atmosphere, the house prices had jumped. Arnold wanted to live there since he had been a teenager though, staying with Howard during the school breaks.

Arnold Rimmer's other hobby was spending time in stasis. You see, Arnold had a plan. It wasn't some half formed plan; no, it was well thought out, with a diagram and a flow chart and everything. He planned to not exist through as much of his spare time as he could. Why should he waste away evenings when he could save that evening for another time? In the six years he had been on Red Dwarf, Arnold had saved over two years. His birth certificate said he was thirty one, but he had the body of a man _just_ over twenty nine.

It wasn't as though he would spend those evenings with friends; he had none and he still had time for revision. True, it wasn't as much revision as he would like to do, but a lot of his time was spent making revision posters for other people. He got paid for it, and he got to learn new stuff while he did it.

There were several exams Arnold could have passed if he had wanted to, including the chef's exam. Olaf Peterson, a catering officer and the best friend of Arnold's bunkmate, often got him to make revision posters for him. It wasn't that Peterson paid him, but Arnold didn't risk getting beat up when he did this, so it was a win really.

Arnold's two hobbies helped save his life. The first was the main factor in it though. To Arnold, painting actually balanced out a lot of his stress; he was slightly less neurotic when he took the time to paint the things in his mind. It meant he relied less on superstitions than he might otherwise have done.

Because he relied less on superstitions, Arnold's second hobby helped save his life.

When Arnold had heard that David Lister, his inadequate bunkmate, was about to sent the rest of the trip in stasis, he was most put out. It wasn't that Arnold Rimmer was sad to lose him bunkmate, but the man would be saving three whole years of his life. Lister was only two weeks shy of turning twenty five! He already had four years on Rimmer, (who did not like to count the time he had been a non-being as... well, time) and he was about to gain another three.

He had been in the medibay after his Astronavigation exam when he had been told. The exam hadn't been particularly successful. Arnold had managed to stay pretty relaxed for it, sitting and staring at the paper. There had even been a question he had known the answer to, unfortunately you had to answer five altogether. He had drawn a beautiful diagram to answer question two, smudged a bit of ink over the other four questions, before signing his name and fainting.

It was a bit irksome that he fainted during his exams. The five previous Astronavigation exams he had sat had all ended in a similar state. He was a little ashamed to say he had only sat six of them, but he had a set amount of time in stasis and the rest was spent drawing and painting. He'd get the hang of exams eventually...

When he had woken up, someone had mentioned to him to not worry that his bunkmate was no longer there because the young man had gotten himself put into stasis for the next three years.

Arnold had not been happy. Three years? Did Lister know how hard he had worked to save two? And he just got three, out of nowhere? It was probably because of that smegging cat the idiot had picked up when they had stopped at Miranda.

While Arnold had been heading to the other stasis booth to save as much of his time as he could, Navigation Officer Henri DuBois spilt his coffee over his keyboard in the Drive Room. He mistakenly assumed that was the cause of the warning lights on his screen.

When the cadmium II coolant system stopped working, deep inside the ship, it went unnoticed. When the cadmium II core reached critical mass, killing nearly everyone on Red Dwarf in the next few seconds, only two people were out of harm's way:

Lister, who had been sealed in a stasis booth by Todhunter earlier in the day and Arnold Rimmer, who had just sealed himself in the other one.  
It was possible that in a universe where Arnold had been more focussed on superstitions, that he hadn't made it to the booth in time. It was possible that there was a universe where Arnold had been distracted from hurrying to the stasis booth by trying to chuck a paper towel he had scrunched into a ball into the bin; where he had been using this method to decide if he could one day become an officer, much in the same way preteens sometimes pulled petals off daisies to decide if someone liked them or not.

However, that universe, if it existed, was not this one. In this one, the paper towel Arnold Rimmer used to dry his hands after he had wet them to try and fix his hair went straight into the bin. He strolled confidently down the corridor and into the stasis booth. He told the computer to leave him in stasis for the evening, as usual and pulled the door shut.

One minute and twenty three point four seconds later, a nuclear wind roared down the corridor with all the power of a neutron star.

Holly debated waking Arnold up a few hours later, but as he was in the middle of speeding Red Dwarf as far away from the Solar System as possible to avoid spreading nuclear contamination, he decided to wake David Lister and Arnold Rimmer up at the same time, when it was safe for them to emerge.


	2. Good Morning

Arnold sighed as he stepped out of stasis, his mind already plotting what he could do before he went to bed. He ought to double check his shift rota for Zed Shift and reassign the shifts that Lister can no longer do. He could hear Holly yammering away at him, but he hurried out.

"Please wait a moment while I wake Dave up, Arnold."

"Lister is in for the next eighteen months, Holly. I have things to do." He walked down the corridor without waiting.

"Arnold…" Holly's voice was oddly blank. Arnold stopped, rolled his eyes and waited for Holly to speak.

"Well?"

"I'm waking Dave. Stay here."

Arnold turned, crossing his arms over his thin chest as he scowled. A moment later, he was grinning; Holly was waking Lister up already. Lister was not going to gain any years on him. Excellent.

He smirked as he watched Lister stroll out the booth.

"What you talking 'bout? I just got in."

"Please can you both proceed to the Drive Room for debriefing?"

"Debriefing?" Arnold walked back over to stand beside Lister. "You've never made me debrief before."

"Please proceed to the Drive Room for debriefing."

Arnold curled his lip as he looked down at his bunkmate, before he set off. Lister was just a step behind.

"Where is everyone, Hol?" Lister asked, his thick accent as irritating as ever. Arnold huffed, holding back a response of 'who cares?' as he went.

"They're dead, Dave." Holly's face appeared on the grey monitor in the small food court near the stasis booths.

"You what?" Lister face twisted into an expression of disbelief as swept a small pile of white powder off a table to sit down.

"Everybody's dead, Dave."

"Dead?" Arnold stepped forward, feeling odd. He blinked a few times, trying to focus his mind on actually processing what Holly had just said.

"Yes, Arnold, dead."

"Everybody?" Lister stuck a finger in the white powder, giving it a lick.

"Everybody, Dave."

"Dead?" repeated Arnold, dropping into a cold, metal chair. It wasn't that his legs had turned to jelly, he just couldn't feel them. He felt this was an important point…

"Everybody is dead, Arnold."

"Peterson isn't, is he?"

"He's dead, Dave. Everyone is."

"Captain Hollister?"

"Hollister's dead, Arnold. They all are."

"Chen?"

"Everybody is dead, Dave."

"McGruder?"

"Arnold, everyone is dead."

"Selby?"

"Dead, Dave." Holly sighed.

"Todhunter?"

"Gordon Bennet! Dead, Dave. Everybody's dead. Everybody is dead, Dave!" snapped Holly impatiently. Arnold sat and stared at the pixelated face, his mind blank. He didn't know anyone else to ask about.

"What about Burroughs?"

"They're _all _dead, Dave! Everybody is dead, Dave. Dave, everybody is dead." Holly's face had a deep scowl set in as he continued. "Dead, Dave, everybody is. Everybody is, Dave, dead!"

"Wait. Are you telling me _everybody's _dead?" Lister finally cottoned on. Arnold wanted to mock him for being so slow, but his jaw couldn't seem to move. Holly just rolled his eyes.

After a few mintues, Arnold made his legs move. He refused to sit there and do nothing. He stood up and Lister copied him.

"Drive Room?" The scouser croaked. Arnold nodded his head, still unable to speak.

The two men stumbled along through the ship, neither speaking. It was rare that they did not bicker, but the two were still in too much shock. Everywhere, piles of white powder covered the floor; there was no discernable pattern that Arnold could see. They were just dropped all over the place.

When they reached the Drive Room, Lister rubbed his finger through the powder that was on the floor by the door. His dark, brown eyes locked with Arnold's blue ones before he frowned down at the stuff.

"Holly, what are these piles of dust?" His voice was soft as he straightened up.

Arnold pushed a finger into a pile by the scanner console. It was soft. Lister was licking more stuff, from a small pile on a chair.

"That, Dave, is Console Executive Imran Sanchez." Holly answered.

"Urgh!" Lister yelped, spitting the powder onto the ground and wiping his tongue. He glanced guiltily over at the other man as he wiped his hand on the back of his trousers.

"Holly. What happened?" Arnold asked, turning sharply to face the monitor on the back wall.

"I couldn't let you out until it was safe; either of you."

"What do you mean?" Lister turned around as well, coming to stand beside Arnold.

"Well… There was a leak, right? And I had to save what I could, right? So while I was moving Red Dwarf away from the Solar System, I left you two in there. I sealed off what I could!" Holly sounded quite defensive by the end. It made Arnold suspicious.

"What aren't you telling us?" he narrowed his eyes. He didn't always manage to do this in the right situation, but it definitely was now. Holly glanced away from them.

"How long were we in stasis, Holly?" Lister's voice had a hard edge to it that Arnold had never heard before. He flicked his eyes towards the younger man curiously, before focussing back on the computer.

"I had to leave you both in there till the radiation reached a safe background level…"

"How long?" snapped Lister.

"Three million years." Holly's voice was even, but his face was twitching nervously.

Arnold barely noticed. He felt his legs give way and he dropped into a heap on the floor. He heard Lister mutter something about a library, but the words didn't make any sense. Library? What was that? Something to do with words… He wasn't sure what though. He stared blankly at the centre console, trying to make his brain work again.

"Krissie… Is she dead? She is, isn't she?"

Krissie? Arnold wondered who Lister was on about. He didn't know anyone called Krissie.

"I always thought… I never told her, but…" Lister trailed off, sitting heavily down in a chair. It squeaked. Arnold forced his head up, looking over at his subordinate as he tried to think of something comforting to say.

"If it's any consolation, the age difference would be insurmountable. You're not yet twenty five. She's three million. It's hard work to have a good relationship with that kind of age gap."

"I always thought… On Fiji. She was gonna come with me. It's cheap there…"

Arnold still couldn't think of anything particularly comforting to say. _Don't worry, you still have me?_ Not now that he was talking about some woman… It occurred to him Krissie was probably Kristine Kochanski. She was an officer who had dated Lister for five weeks.

Those five weeks had been wonderful. Lister had been pleasant to talk to. He had defended Arnold when Peterson had been trying to upset him him again, waving his hands around in a mockery of the salute Arnold took so seriously. Lister had smiled, he had been genuinely interested in the paintings Arnold had been doing, asking questions about why he painted the background green before he started some paintings and not others, or why he didn't actually do a thick outline to follow. They had been asked without the intent of mocking Arnold later on.

Arnold Rimmer had been very happy when Lister had been dating the officer. However, that all changed when she chucked him. Gone was Lister's eager attitude towards their work, gone was his interest in anything Arnold did. His smiles disappeared and he started trying to write music… It had been agony. Arnold had been tempted to go beg Kochanski to drop whoever she was in bed with now and take Lister with her.

Now she was dead… He hoped Lsiter wouldn't try write a requiem. The young man was still rambling on about his plan. Holly was just staring at him.

Kochanski was dead. Arnold started with that idea. She was dead. Captain Hollister was too. Yvonne McGruder… Frank Todhunter… Dr McClaren… All the crew… They were all dead. They had been dead for three million years.

Arnold's stomach cramped suddenly. He curled up from his position on the Drive Room floor. Dead…

The crew were dead…

Everyone in their Solar System would be dead. Would he have reatives still? Howard juniors times a million running around in Callisto's breathable atmsopehere? Would Earth still be there? How long did stars live? How long would it take for their sun to go supernova and eat up half the solar system like Catholic who had just broken their Lent fasting on Easter Sunday?

Would Earth now be drifting aimlessly around the sun in molecules? Much in the same manner they probably were drifting through the universe… He didn't think their mining expeditions would be much use to the human race now.

Was there a human race anymore? Would they still be there?

He looked up from his foetal position to ask…

"What d' ya mean 'extinct'?" Lister's voice was rushed, as though he couldn't bare to think about the words… Had he been reading Arnold's mind? Curious. He hadn't been listening to Lister and Holly.

"Well, three million years is a very good age for a species…" Holly began, but Arnold interrupted him, shuffling so that he was slightly more upright.

"We are all that's left?"

"The chances of the human race making it to the big three-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh… well, they're not very good, are they? You may just have to face the fact that your species is gone."

Arnold curled into himself again, trying to quell the acidic feeling that was spreading through his gut… Extinct…

Lister dropped onto the floor next to him. Arnold moved so that his bunkmate could pull him close. Despite Arnold's aversion to touching, he rather needed this.

Something began to drip down his face.

He didn't dare look at Lister; the man didn't need to see his tears.


	3. Whatever Next

David Lister was dreaming. He was watching himself at the Copacabana Bar with Kochanski. She was smiling that mega-watt smile at him and listening to him complain about Rimmer. This was normal. He had liked to talk to her about any number of things because she was always sympathetic.

He knew this was a dream though, mainly because the floor of the bar was actually a choppy sea, crashing into their legs as they chatted. He listened to himself complain about Rimmer for a while, about his annoying habits; about his physical aspects; about the way he complained about not passing exams but never actually got around to sitting them; about the way the man was always painting something.

As he complained, he became aware of Rimmer, standing nearby. The scouser could hear a noise in his ear, as though someone was shouting him, but Rimmer and Kochanski were not paying him any attention. The other man's face was odd, a smile upon it. The smile was the oddly fake one Rimmer always painted people with… The smiles in his pictures never actually looked happy. As Lister stared, he realised the difference was in the eyes. He resolved to fix this, and stepped forward, shooting the other Lister in the chest.

Kochanski watched as the man she had been talking to pitched forwards and disappeared. She went back to sipping her drink.

The noise in his ear got louder. It was sharp… He jumped back, trying to move away but he tumbled over, the water around his knees moving him off balance.

His eyes flew open and he looked around. He was in his bunk.

"What?" he groaned as he looked around. Rimmer was stood by the bunk, glaring furiously, nostrils flared out like a parachute.

"You were snoring." Rimmer accused him, his nose scrunching up in that weird way it did when the man was annoyed.

"Eh?"

"You were snoring."

"Oh. Sorry, man."

He shut his eyes and let out a breath, his mind drifting back to a bar, but this time it was empty… peaceful… Maybe because no one was there.

"LISTER!" Rimmer's exhausted voice snapped loudly.

"What is it?" he grumbled, rolling over to face the back wall.

"You were snoring again."

"So?"

"I can't sleep through that noise. It's like you're torturing some smegging animal on a rack."

"I can't help it."

Seriously, what did Rimmer expect him to do about it? They had both headed to bed around the same time, but in all the time the younger man had known him, Rimmer had never been able to lie down and go straight to sleep. He was not going to come to bed an hour or two later than Rimmer just to make the man happy.

He heard Rimmer drop back onto his own bunk, whining under his breath about orang-utans and toenails and tooth picks. The man seriously needed to chill out sometimes.

"Rimmer?" he called down, deciding to talk to the man. There were certain things they needed to discuss and it might be easier in the dark.

"What?"

"I've asked Holly to turn the ship around."

"Whatever have you done that for?" Rimmer's Ionian accent was always more noticeable when he was annoyed. This probably wasn't going to help…

"I think we should go home."

"Why? It's not like we'll ever make it."

"I wanna see what's left. I wanna see if the human race _is_ extinct, or if it 'as evolved into a race of super humans… I wanna know what's there."

"It's three millions years away, Lister. You may as well forget about it."

"I can't." he really couldn't. He'd tried to settled down and imagine that the world wasn't the same anymore. Life on Earth in the twenty third century was not even remotely similar to what it would have been three million years earlier… They didn't have computers or anything back then.

"Even so… We won't make it." Rimmer's voice had gone soft, whether in sad acknowledgement of the likely passing of their species or in response to Lister's own unhappy response, he didn't know.

"We could go back into stasis?"

"No."

"Why not?" He knew Rimmer liked the stasis booths. He knew the man used them frequently to save up the time he had spare.

"You won't wake me up again."

"You what?"

"If we get back to Earth, and that's a big if in itself, if we get back, you won't wake me up."

"What? Course I will."

"You won't. We'll get there and you'll be caught up in all the high emotions you'll have and you won't remember to wake me up."

"Holly will wake us at the same time."

"That's another point. I'm not entirely sure Holly is right after this first three million years. Imagine how he'll be after another. He may not remember to wake _either_ of us up."

"Oh, come on. That's not fair. Holly was an IQ of six thousand."

"Have you spoke to him? Actually spoken to him? He has some suspicious gaps in his knowledge."

"What are you saying to me, Rimmer?"

"That right now, I'm not sure Holly could spell IQ."

Lister sighed, not replying to that. Holly had gone a little weird after three million years on his own, but it was fine. Who cares if he complained about the book 'Zero Gee Football – It's a Funny Old Game' by Joe Klumpp far more often than was probably right?

"He'll get us back to Earth, Rimmer. It'll be fine."

"I have another objection to that." Rimmer's voice was gentle now, not the usual nasally whine he had. Lister shifted, he had a feeling that the dark was helping Rimmer actually open up.

"What is it?"

"I… When we get back to Earth… We'll…" Rimmer stumbled, but Lister waited. "We have bones in museums of people from three million years ago. People have been trying to understand the evolution of man from something like the nineteenth century, when Charlie Chaplin brought out his book on how humans used to be apes."

"So?"

"We'll be walking history. What if… What if they put us in some kind of a museum… or a laboratory or something? What if they do experiments on us?"

"Don't be daft, man."

"I'm not." Rimmer voice raised in pitch, his fear bleeding through into his tone. "I went to boarding school on Earth, in England. We visited the Natural History Museum in London."

"And?"

"They had all the bones there. They had everything, from the mummified remains of people there to dinosaurs. They had all these objects out on display, just their normal everyday stuff. What if we end up like that?"

"Like… museum displays?"

"Yes!" Rimmer voice was reaching shrill now. Lister realised he was going to have to say something to calm his bunkmate down. He cast his mind around, trying to think of something.

"Like you said, it's a big if on whether or not we get back anyway. I really wanna try… But, we can take a few days to think about it."

"We could just fly back, but not in stasis?" suggested Rimmer.

"Why?"

"Maybe… we could find aliens? They could have better scanners than Red Dwarf. They could tell us if it was safe." Rimmer really sounded scared. He sort of had a point, Lister did not want to become a living museum display, or an experiment; to be poked and prodded to satisfy other people's curiosity.

"Maybe we could try a bit of both?"

"What do you mean?"

"Explore space for a bit, then go into stasis for a bit… and repeat?"

"Maybe. What are you so desperate to get back for anyway?"

"I have a plan. I don't have much anymore, but I still have me plan."

"Plan?"

"Yeah." What the Hell? He may as well tell the smeghead. "I'm gonna buy some land on Fiji, right? It's dead cheap there, something to do with a flood. Well, that might have changed now, but I'll get land somewhere cheap.

It'll be good, you know. I'll have a sheep and a cow. Cos, wool and milk. And I'll have horses, cos that's what everyone who owns a farm has. I may even grow crops or summet. It'll be good. I might have to get a cat though. There wasn't one in the original plan, but I got one on Miranda so I could go back to Earth without getting any older. I got her all inoculated and everything, but she's in the plan now.

I was gonna have Kochanski there too. But, like Holly said, she's not really… around anymore." He felt a brief pang, but he carried on. "You could come too, if you like? The last two human beings… We could hang out and keep bitching at each other. And chase off any of the new types of humans away like grouchy old men."

He grinned at the idea. It actually sounded awesome.

"What do you say, Rimmer?"

There was no reply. As he listened, he could hear Rimmer's soft snuffling as he curled up into his pillow. Oh well, least now he could go to sleep and not have Rimmer moan about his snoring.


	4. Not Human

Holly watched the two humans. They were arguing again. Arnold Rimmer and Davis Lister were always arguing. He hoped they would stop soon, because it wasn't really very entertaining; they didn't let him join in.

Currently, they were bickering about Lister's robot goldfish. Holly wasn't entirely sure what Rimmer's objection to the fish was, but he didn't care. As the saying went, robot fish were robot fish were robot fish… or something along those lines. The point was, it was daft to argue over something like this.

He decided to distract them.

"Hey dudes. What's happening?"

"Not now, Hol." snapped Lister, his eyes focussed on Rimmer.

"Oh, you don't want to know about the life form then." He hid his image for a moment, knowing they would call him back.

"Life form? Holly?" Lister had turned to face the screen in their room.

"Aliens!" exclaimed Rimmer.

"I dunno what it is." Holly lied. It would be one of the cat people, they very very rarely actually come up onto the main decks, as in once in a few millennia, but once upon a time they had had a city in the lower levels.

"Not aliens?" asked Rimmer, looking slightly disappointed.

"Dunno. I just have something on the heat scanner."

"Can you tell us anything about it, Hol?"

"Just one thing: It's not human."

Lister's face adopted a serious frown. He nodded his head.

"We'll grab a couple of bazookoids and head down."

"We?" Rimmer looked faint. He clearly did not agree with this plan.

"Come on, Rimmer." Lister turned and left, not acknowledging his bunkmate.

"It won't kill me, will it Holly?"

"I couldn't say for sure, Arnold." Rimmer paled even further, sinking onto his bunk.

"I might stay here."

"If you stay here and Lister dies you'll be alone forever." Holly pointed out. "Go help him"

Rimmer nodded; he sucked in a deep breath and looked at the screen. "What if I die?"

"I doubt you will." The cats weren't interested in killing things. Maybe their ancestors had had an interest in mice, but Red Dwarf didn't have anything more challenging than space weevil scuttling around the decks.

Rimmer stood up, straightened his uniform and hurried out to catch up with Lister. Holly shimmied his attention off the screen and watched the two men through the cameras installed throughout the ship.

There were no cameras in the bowels of the ship. He had heat sensors and he used to be able to send the scutters to look around, but he couldn't actually see anything down there.

Holly rather hoped they didn't die in those lower decks, he wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

* * *

They emerged with a cat; not the kind of feline that curled up in your lap and dug its claws into your skin to get comfortable, but a cat person. He didn't seem to have evolved much since the last time Holly had seen one. Cats had always been fashion obsessed. They had always been more interested in nice clothes and mating than in doing anything.

It was fortunate they had evolved on Red Dwarf, he supposed. If they had been anywhere else, they would have had to invent things like washing machines and irons for themselves.

The Cat was currently trying to explain that he didn't have a name. Lister was clearly struggling with the idea. He argued that society didn't work without names; that _relationships _needed names to have any success.

The Cat scoffed at this idea. He replied that cat relationships rarely lasted more than three minutes.

Holly waited until they entered their quarters before making his pixelated face appear on the screen. Rimmer was the only one to acknowledge him, which he did as he trailed into the room with a wan smile.

As Lister continued to question the Cat about everything he could think of, from how they had built their city, to his parents, to their religion, Holly watched Rimmer curl up on his bunk and turn his back to the rest of the room. Holly assumed Rimmer was worrying about being left alone again; when Rimmer's personality had been scanned into the computer at the beginning of his time on Red Dwarf, the man had had a great deal of fear of being entirely alone.

It was a reasonable fear; Rimmer was not what most people considered a pleasant man and now that the human race had mostly kicked the bucket, leaving just two splashes of water on the floor of the universe, then Rimmer didn't have much chance for companionship.

And those odds had just taken a dive now that Lister had found someone else to talk to.

Holly supposed he could make a hologram to keep Rimmer happy if Lister did end up spending all his time with the Cat down in the city. The man did not like to touch people very much anyway, so that wouldn't be a problem for him.

Sadly, Holly didn't have anyone in his databanks that Rimmer might get along with, unless he was going to make a second Arnold Rimmer to go along with the first.

* * *

"Jump here, jump back, oh ah! Waahhhh!" sang the Cat.

Holly watched silently. His job was now to look after the two remaining humans. He had to determine whether or not the Cat was actually any good for either of them. He knew he couldn't cut the oxygen supply off for the Cat when he was on a different floor to the others; Lister would miss him.

On the other hand, Rimmer really did not. Rimmer was filled with jealousy as he had lost all of Lister's attention. If he removed the Cat from the equation, then Lister would surely have to return his attention to the first engineer. But Lister would be furious.

It was a right smegger of a problem, and Holly just didn't know what to do.

He didn't worry about it for long though. His attention was pulled rapidly away when he finally paid attention to the alarm that was buzzing at him.

They were about to hit the light barrier; in less than 0.002 seconds, in fact.

That did not make any sense.

Okay, it was true that a vessel the size of Red Dwarf should cruise comfortably at 200, 000 miles an hour; and, yes, it was true that Holly had forgotten to stop accelerating over the past three million years.

It was also true that Red Dwarf was now travelling at 669, 555, 000 miles an hour, which was just 45, 000 miles an hour below the speed of light. Holly programmed the computer to slow down. He wasn't sure this would help, because slowing down when you were going so fast just meant that you weren't speeding up quite as quickly.

The problem was… The light barrier counts as the ultimate speed limit. Nothing can go faster than light. Holly wasn't sure what would happen exactly.

Various theorists had assumed that at the speed of light, your atoms would drift apart and come to rest in different points along your flight path. Other theorists had claimed you would occupy every point in the universe simultaneously. Other theorists had believed your would pass through space into time. Some pessimistic buggers had said you would hit a solid wall of light and be crushed to death.

Still, whatever was going to happen would happen now. If Holly had had actual eye lids, rather than pixelated eyes that were actually linked up to cameras, then he would have squeezed them shut.

Oh dear…


End file.
